While traveling back home with my family earlier this week our second flight - which was close to midnight - remained at the gate for a while after the flight attendants concluded their safety announcements. Finally, the pilot announced everything was ready for takeoff, and they were waiting for certain paperwork to be signed. “We made several phone calls but are unsure when it will happen.” Ten minutes later, he announced the paperwork was in order, and we were in the air within minutes. This minor wrinkle in our travel reminded me of an important theme connected to this Shabbat’s Torah reading and Haftarah reading.
This coming Wednesday evening and Thursday (July 26-27) we will observe Tisha B’Av, the major fast day commemorating the destruction of the two Holy Temples and other major tragedies in Jewish history. While mourning is the overarching theme of the day’s observances (no eating or drinking, wearing non-leather shoes, sitting on low seats until midday, and more) the main message of the extra prayers we say then is about the imminent redemption and rebuilding of the Holy Temple.
On the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av we begin reading the fifth book of the Torah called Devarim, which is a record of Moshe’s final instructions to the Jewish people before they entered the Promised Land. Our sages explain that the forty-year desert sojourn - with its 42 steps - was not a technical itinerary for bringing 3 million people from Egypt to Israel. It represented a necessary spiritual process to prepare the world and the Jews to achieve the monumental goal of transforming the Land of Canaan into the Holy Land through their divine service.
The beginning of the book of Devarim signals that the preparation process is complete and now the Jews need only receive their final pep-talk and instructions before embarking on their mission.
Jewish mysticism explains the same is true about our current reality. The destruction of the Holy Temple and the subsequent exile is not simply divine retribution for our bad behavior. It was the beginning of a long and painful, but necessary, spiritual process to prepare the world and ourselves for the realization of the purpose of creation. When every creature will recognize the Creator and function according to its purpose in creation.
Devarim signals to us that these preparations are complete and we are now standing at the threshold of redemption. So what’s missing? Some important paperwork.
The Haftarah we read this week from Isaiah concludes: Zion shall be redeemed through justice (Torah study) and her penitent through righteousness (charity and mitzvot). Maimonides declared over 800 years ago that one can and must view the world as an equally balanced scale between good and bad and one single good deed, word or thought can tip the balance and usher in the era of redemption for the entire world. In other words, the long and arduous spiritual preparation process of exile is now complete and the only thing holding up redemption is the one mitzvah that can be done or the one Torah idea that can be studied and understood.
We don’t know which one it will be, so let’s be sure not to waste any opportunity to study Torah or do a mitzvah, and not delay the “paperwork” any longer.
(Inspired by Sichas Devarim 5748)